It is known that feedstock cost account for significant part of overall ethanol production cost. The key is to obtain cheap fermentable monomer sugars from lignocellulosic biomass with the following factors:
· Monomer sugar recovery yield. If we look at biomass, only ~65-70% of cell wall is carbohydrate that is our target to convert into monomer sugars. The question is how to efficiently hydrolyze it with high yield. Chemically or enzymatically? Currently both cannot achieve high sugar yield and high efficiency. The combination of chemical and enzymatical hydrolysis is the direction. However, more factors need to be considered to achieve high sugar yield when talking about a commercialized technology:
o Recoverable/recyclable chemicals that minimize the chemical cost and waste treatment
o The pH of pretreatment that impacts reactor metallurgy
o The temperature of pretreatment that impacts energy usage
o The robust of enzymes that reduce the loading and increase the efficiency
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